Signatures come after state's prison director shot and killed Tuesday

DENVER - Gov. John Hickenlooper signed three controversial gun bills Wednesday morning, even as police were searching for the man who shot to death a member of his cabinet Tuesday night.

The governor signed bills to require background checks for private gun sales, ban the sale of new ammunition magazines greater than 15 rounds, and require gun buyers to pay for their own background checks.

"What we have signed here today are several bills that make our state materially safer in the long-run," Hickenlooper said.

Two more gun bills remain to be debated in the House, but Wednesday's signatures mark the beginning of the end of an extraordinarily heated debate, even by the standards of the state Capitol. Gun rights advocates packed into committee hearings that stretched for hours, and drivers circled the Capitol honking their horns for hours when the Senate was voting on the bills. Several legislators received threats of violence.

Legislative leaders didn't intend to make the session about guns, said Senate President John Morse, D-Colorado Springs.

"It was forced upon us by two horrific massacres in one year, one in our own back yard. It's been an exhausting and emotionally draining session," Morse said.

Hickenlooper signed the bills eight months to the day after the Aurora movie theater massacre.

He also signed the bills about 12 hours after his director of the Department of Corrections, Tom Clements, was shot to death when he answered the door at his Monument home Tuesday night.

"I think it's a coincidence, but an incredibly tragic and sad coincidence, that we have to process all this in a single day," Hickenlooper said.

The governor also said he would issue a "signing statement" along with the 15-round magazine ban, in order to address concerns that the new law could be interpreted as banning almost all magazines.

Attorney General John Suthers asked Hickenlooper for the signing statement. Gun rights advocates have pledged to sue the state over the law.

"We're going to suggest the interpretation of these laws in a very narrow sense," Hickenlooper said.